Species Spotlight: Chokecherry and Blue Elderberry

Anne White

voices

Durlin Hicock, Alice Elshoff Award winner

Durlin Hicock, Alice Elshoff Award winner

“Protecting public land is part of my spiritual being. It’s central to my identity to be in wilderness and to see it protected.” Durlin is proud to protect public lands for future generations, saying, “The highlight of my childhood was our family’s weekend outdoor trips. I look forward to my grandchildren having similar experiences outside in their lifetimes, and it wouldn’t be possible without ONDA.”

watch

Stewardship Fence Building Timelapse

Stewardship Fence Building Timelapse

voices

Helen Harbin, ONDA Board Member

Helen Harbin, ONDA Board Member

“I connect with Oregon’s high desert through my feet, my eyes, my sense of smell, and all the things I hear. Getting out there is a whole body experience.” Supporting ONDA, Helen says, not only connects her with wild landscapes, but is also a good investment. “I felt like if I gave them $20, they might squeeze $23 out of it.”

Courtney Kelly Jett

Tom Brandt

Blue Elderberry (Sambucus nigra var. caerulea)

One of the most widely distributed shrubs in North America and Europe, the blue elderberry shows up as a possible fossil in John Day’s Clarno Nut Beds, incompletely identified but intriguing: fossil evidence points to a circum-global forest in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere sometime during the Eocene, 56-32.9 million years ago; in other words, this shrub really gets around.

Names too suggest origin stories: Sambuca was an ancient Greek wind instrument, referencing the use of twigs to make whistles, and elder comes not from “old” but from the Anglo-Saxon “aeld”, meaning fire, because hollow stems of the shrub were used as bellows.

The flowers, bark, leaves, twigs and roots are a native pharmacopeia, and the berries are an important late-season food gift. Well-loved by bears, game birds, squirrels, deer, and elk, the shrubs provide food and nesting territory for a plethora of songbirds.

Widely used in riparian restoration projects, they are thriving in ONDA’s collaborative plantings with the Northern Paiute at Juntura along the Malheur River. Part of the desert stream’s thin green line, they provide streamside shade, sheltering other plant species, and helping to stabilize banks with their roots.

This 3-20’ shrub has yellow-white flowers in flat sprays that rise above compound pointy shaped leaves, followed by blackish-blue berries. If you have the opportunity, raise a glass to this remarkable shrub, known and treasured by cultures across millennia spanning the globe, and right here in our desert backyard.

Anne White

Andy Frank

Species Spotlight: Chokecherry and Blue Elderberry

Author: Elizabeth MacLagan  |  Published: May 18, 2023  | Category: Species Spotlight  Widely planted for habitat restoration, Chokecherry and Blue Elderberry are important species in the high desert ecosystem. These […]

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Recover America’s Wildlife

This action is retired for now. Please sign-up for our e-newsletter to stay up-to-date on all our advocacy needs and thank you for your interest in supporting wildlife in Oregon!

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Hundreds of Oregon groups support the River Democracy Act

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